Amelia Bikes

August 22

About a month ago, my friend Alanah invited me to go on a 6 day backpacking trip on the Hesquiat Trail, which is a 50km trail along the coast on the Pacific side of Vancouver Island.

I went pretty much straight from PCT Days up to Victoria. A nice distraction from my obsession with whether to hike or not to hike the PCT again. Can I even do it?

Alanah had said it would be extremely chill. She enjoyed hiking slow, and the route wasn’t that long. We’d hike on average about 10km per day. I figured this would be a great way to get back into backpacking, and especially with a group.

I’ve been quite fearful of hiking, or backpacking since my injuries. It’s far more mental than it is physical at this point. My left ankle surgery was 7 months ago. My right femur was fully healed in December. But I have a lingering consciousness of these broken bones that’s there with every step I take with either leg.

We met up with the rest of the group for lunch in Campbell River before we all continued on. The rest of the group included Chris and Naomi, long time friends of Alanah. Funny enough I met Alanah through Dandelion and Analog, who I met just after the Sierra. They had adopted me into their friend group when I moved to Victoria. The trail provides.

Yesterday we drove up from Victoria and then camped at a campground in Gold River, BC and then in the morning we drove down the road to Air Nootka where we would board our flight to be dropped off for the hike.

They made us weigh our backpacks and I’m pleased to say that my bag with 6 days of food and 2L of water was 32lbs! I’ve gotten my base weight down to 15lbs down from the 25 whole pounds it was when I began the PCT. But this is not the PCT, and I wasn’t hiking with ultralight hikers. Chris’ bag weighed 52lbs and the other two weighed about 43. There was some confusion about whether the numbers were in pounds or kilograms which was funny. I guess they use pounds for weighing things boarding the airplane.

The people in the office kept saying how light my bag was and calling me an ultralight hiker which is so funny to me, because compared to some of the true gram weenies I met on the PCT, I’m not at all. There is definitely a difference between thru hiking and a week long backpacking trip, and I suppose I don’t really know how to go backpacking for a week. I brought just the things I had in my pack towards the end of the trail, but I did bring extra socks (4 pairs vs my usual 3). The woman in the office asked me to send her a message from my InReach once we got to camp so she’d have my contact info. There have been some storms and she would stay in touch in case we needed to get out.

The airplane ride was so cool. It was a tiny little plane that fit 6 people total including the pilot. The pilot had only worked there for 3 weeks but he assured us he had been flying planes for longer than that. He was from Ontario and had gotten the job at Air Nootka for a change. Before we were taking off, we saw a bald eagle catching a salmon. The pilot casually pointed it out, like oh yeah btw.

We chose to fly to the trail, although we could have taken a boat, but that would be a full day there. The trail is extremely remote. We are on a part of the island where there are no roads out to where we’re hiking, and the land is part First Nations land, and part national preserve.

We landed the plane and had to taxi around some rocks to get to a beach where there was a boat that seemed to be beached in the exact spot where the pilot had wanted to unload us. He had told us we’d need to help hold the plane while we were unloading and also help him take off again since there was no dock. All went smoothly though and we watched him take off again.

There were a few tents set up on the beach where we were dropped off, and it appeared like the beached boat was trying to leave. They got unstuck when we got up on the beach, and so we watched them leave too.

A man in a sweatshirt walked over from some of the tents and immediately reminded us we were on First Nations land and it was their home. While we didn’t need permits to hike the trail, Alanah had asked permission from the First Nations for us to be there, and had told them about each of us. She said we were excited to be there and mentioned having hiked many other similar trails, that we were all experienced hikers regarding Leave No Trace.

We asked if he was from the nearby village of Hesquiat but he said he lived in Victoria. He told us about the water source nearby but said it was quite dry and he had been dehydrated. We offered him some electrolytes but he said he had some. His group was planning on taking 10 days to hike and we said we would probably see them again, but that was quite unlikely given our timeline.

We set off on the trail and we were soon very alone. There was nobody else out there. We watched the orange tents grow smaller and smaller as we continued down the beach.

The Hesquiat “trail” is a bit misleading of a name because for the most part, there actually is no trail. It’s flat because it’s along the coast and there is no elevation gain, but the trail is extremely technical. You have to find your own path over tons of rocks, many covered in slippery seaweed. There are some sections where you have to avoid crevasses where the water has dug away into the rock. There was one section where there was a rope and you have to pull yourself up a hill and then bushwack through the woods to go around one of the crevasses. I’m sure there’s a better word than crevasse but I don’t know. I can’t Google anything because there is no phone service here.

Anyway, this 50km hike was going to be a humbling experience. I’d say the terrain may have been as difficult as Mission Creek and the Oregon lava fields on the PCT in terms of route finding over rocks, and navigating rocky terrain. But we went slow, and we all hiked together so at no point was I scrambling to keep up with anyone. We all helped each other throughout the day and there was only one mishap towards the end of the day when Naomi slipped and fell into some water.

The timing of this incident unfortunately occurred just after we had been joking about how the water we were walking through water which smelled quite terrible from the low tide and rotting seaweed, and we were walking on rocks over some stagnant smelly water, carefully trying not to fall in. We thought it seemed like the bog of eternal stench from The Labyrinth, but Naomi found one of many unstable rocks and ended up in the bog.

Just before Barchester Bay where we were planning on campung, is a water source with a waterfall! We collected some water there and continued to the beach to set up camp. By then, everyone was dragging a bit. While there is no elevation gain, the amount of climbing up and down over rocks was quite tiring. There are some markers for campsites and water in the form of buoys hanging from trees, but there’s also just a lot of buoys that appear to have washed up on shore so sometimes it’s unclear where the actual markers are.

At the beginning of the day, my ankle kind of hurt when weight bearing, but it began to hurt less as the day went on. My ankles are just still weak. But this hike would sure help with that.

Alanah had a map where she had marked potential water sources from someone’s blog post from a few years ago, but other than that, there’s not much information out there. There’s no FarOut app out here. There’s no trail. There are barely any AllTrails comments. There’s no phone service. There are basically no other hikers. This may be more remote than any part of the PCT, even the Sierra, which is the most remote section of all.

But, because there are so few people out here, there is so much wildlife. Immediately after we started walking down the beach, we saw bear tracks, some kind of large bird, elk or deer maybe. While walking we saw many snakes, crabs, fish in the tide pools and then once we arrived at camp, we saw a whale (possibly 2) in the water right in front of our campsite, and then a bear down the beach.

We saw a lot of bear poop on the beach, and Chris unfortunately stepped in some, so between that and the bear prints, we thought we might see some. It must be nice to be a bear, just foraging for berries all day and taking shits on the beach whenever you please.

We cooked dinner together and I went into my tent quite early. I was so tired. My back hurt from pulling myself up on the rocks. But I was happy to be backpacking again. Everyone joked again that I was an ultralight backpacker but I said that no I was just a “lightweight” backpacker. Chris asked what he would be and I said he would probably be a Super Ultra Heavy backpacker and everyone agreed that would be a great trail name, which he accepted!

This is a very different type of backpacking than I’m used to. I don’t have to obsess about the miles. We have been sharing things like water filters because we’re always together. We hike the whole day together and don’t split up. It’s been nice in that way. I don’t actually have much experience hiking like that. Most of the time on the PCT there was always this worry of getting left behind, the inability to share things because of that. I don’t think I would call this hike relaxing due to the very technical nature of it, but I am very glad to be here.